From Renee herself:
With a background in education and athletics, I transferred out of the classroom and am an entrepreneur of my dream job! I founded my business RL Academy where I help high school athletes navigate the college recruiting process. I offer coaching on the college recruiting process, webinars to classrooms full of student-athletes, and I recently released my first book, "Looking For A FULL RIDE?: An Insider's Recruiting Guide."
I am not a recruiting service, but rather give the student-athletes and families the tools they need to find their success. Knowing that I am still able to make an impact on students, but not in the traditional classroom way, encourages my heart to keep at this dream! I'm absolutely be honored to share my story with you to be an inspiration and beacon of hope to fellow educators on their journey out of traditional education.
Contact: www.rlopezcoaching.com
From Renee herself:
With a background in education and athletics, I transferred out of the classroom and am an entrepreneur of my dream job! I founded my business RL Academy where I help high school athletes navigate the college recruiting process. I offer coaching on the college recruiting process, webinars to classrooms full of student-athletes, and I recently released my first book, "Looking For A FULL RIDE?: An Insider's Recruiting Guide."
I am not a recruiting service, but rather give the student-athletes and families the tools they need to find their success. Knowing that I am still able to make an impact on students, but not in the traditional classroom way, encourages my heart to keep at this dream! I'm absolutely be honored to share my story with you to be an inspiration and beacon of hope to fellow educators on their journey out of traditional education.
Contact: www.rlopezcoaching.com
Welcome to Season 2 of The Get Out Of Teaching Podcast presented by Larksong Enterprises. I'm your host, Elizabeth Diacos. On the show, we'll look at the who, what, where, why, when and how of moving out of your Education, career and into a life you love. In this season, we'll meet ex-teachers who have taken their hobbies and passions from outside of Education and created a new career for themselves. We'll talk to people who can support and inspire us as we make the transition and work on identifying the legacy we want to leave in the world. So come along for the ride as we get out of teaching. What keeps you in teaching when you'd rather leave? I'm sure it won't surprise you to learn that financial pressure is a major reason. That's why today's show is sponsored by Chris Carlin, Financial Planner and Mortgage Broker from Master Your Money Now, Chris is not about taking excessive risks that you're not comfortable with. He's really careful to help you understand the relationship between risk and return and his fees are very reasonable. Chris can help you sort out your cash flow, pay down debt and plan your financially strategic exit from teaching, making sure you take care of everything you've worked so hard for. Chris understands personal insurance cover too, and can help you make a successful claim so that you don't have to deal with the insurance company yourself - a huge relief if you're feeling stressed and overwhelmed by money concerns. He can even help you plan for retirement. With over nine years experience in the finance sector, Aussie's from all around the country have trusted Chris to help plan their financial futures. Chris Carlin cares for the caring professions, teachers and nurses helping you to shore up your financial resources so that you'll be in a good position to leave. When you're ready. Go to masteryourmoneynow.com.au to book a free 30 minute chat with Chris Carlin, and Master Your Money Now. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the show. On today's show I'm very pleased to be speaking with coach Renee Lopez, thanks for coming on the show today, Renee,
Renee Lopez :Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Elizabeth Diacos :All right. So tell us your story. Renee, what got you into teaching in the first place?
Renee Lopez :Well, you know, it's interesting. I went in and did my undergrad in elementary education. And I actually started to teach, you know, third, fourth, fifth grade, and I was even student teaching during September 11th, which was a little bit crazy, of course, but I got into teaching and I didn't love it. It was crazy. I thought I was going to because I you know, I always been coaching youth sports and things like that, I've been working summer camps and things like that and I just got into it and I didn't really love it and all of a sudden I had a degree, I was thinking, "Oh my gosh, what am I gonna do with this degree?" and I had also started coaching more at the high school level and had decided instead that I wanted to kind of make a shift into coaching college, and I went to coach college for 14 years. And now, I do a little bit something different and what that is, is I stepped out of college coaching and working in Education working in colleges and and you know, in schools and now what I do is I teach kids about the college recruiting process and how to get athletic scholarships in order to go to playing college because in the States, you want to be able to go to college, hopefully, for free or a little bit discounted instead of having to pay tons of money to go to school, for college or university. And so what we do is we try and teach them the process of what it is and so that was part of it. And we also wrote a book and the past few years, too. So that has been a crazy, crazy shift. But working in Education on in schools, but now I actually work with kids and families and I love what I do every day.
Elizabeth Diacos :So you're - you initially were like a sports coach? And now, so we don't really have quite that system here in Australia. But I understand there's like it's... so basically what you're doing is helping kids qualify for a scholarship. Is that right?
Renee Lopez :For athletics, specifically, yes. So we teach them what to do, how to contact college coaches, how to do the right things on social media, and make sure they don't do the wrong things on social media. Ok, we teach them all the ways of how to put a video together to get noticed by a college coach and all those types of things. And so what we did was, you know, interviewed 65 college coaches and athletic directors to create my book, which came out just a few months ago. And what we learned was-
Elizabeth Diacos :Congratulations!
Renee Lopez :Thank you! It was definitely quite a feat after interviewing 65 college coaches and athletic directors and scheduling those interviews for sure was was quite a bit of work. But we put that all together basically to provide an insider's perspective. So all these people, a lot of them are friends of mine just from different colleges throughout the United States and from different levels and from 19 different sports. And so we put all that together, and now I do Recruiting Education. A lot of what I do now is webinars, I do some stuff in high schools and in sports clubs, but also consulting individuals, and families, and I run a lot of Facebook groups and also have over 40 blogs on my website to help kids with the college recruiting process.
Elizabeth Diacos :Wow. So are you who would you say you're now who's your target market - is it? Is it a family? Is it a school, like a high school or secondary school? Like who's who you...?
Renee Lopez :It depends. It actually depends. Sometimes I'll go and speak, you know, there's a couple times just right before all these happened with Coronavirus. You know, we would go into an area we'd speak in three or four different high schools or secondary schools in an area where they would bring the parents and teachers and other sports coaches for the site high schools together. Otherwise, sometimes there's just individual families that will contact me and they just want to be a part of - want to me to be doing some consulting with them and walk them through the process and just from an insider's perspective, because it's a very competitive market. And people really want to get athletic scholarships, but they don't know what to do. And if they're not being told what to do a lot of times they make a lot of mistakes, and they say the wrong things to college coaches, which actually ends up shifting in the wrong direction. So, I just do a lot of consulting and I do a lot of advising with them and trying to walk them through the process and teach them what to do and what not to do.
Elizabeth Diacos :So tell me, what would be the wrong things to say that's not really obvious, like here in Australia, I think you'd be great at it, especially the social media thing, because we have some footballers who do some really dumb stuff. And it's like, "Come on, guys. Really? Did you think that was a good idea? What were you thinking?" So what advice or sorry, what would be an example of something that may not be obvious that you could do wrong, that would, you know, take you out of the running for a scholarship like that?
Renee Lopez :Well, I think there's two major mistakes that people make. One is they expect that college coaches are just going to find them because they're a talented athlete, as opposed to initiating the conversation with college coaches, via email and social media and things like that. And I think a lot of people sit back and say, "I'm talented. They know who - they're going to know who I am. I'm in the newspaper" or such as opposed to realizing but they don't know you're interested in your school that school specifically. And so they often sit back thinking all these offers is just going to come to them, as opposed to they need to go and put in the work in order to get seen and to get noticed by those college coaches. I think that's the first mistake. The second mistake that people make, especially student athletes, especially we're talking teenagers, they tend to put some things on social media that are not in their best interest. And so you look at you say, "Okay, guys, if what you're about to post on your social media, whatever it is, whatever platform you're using, whether it's Twitter or Facebook, or Instagram or you know, Tiktok or something like that. Would it be okay for a pastor to read? Would it be okay for the principal or the headmaster of your school to read?"
Elizabeth Diacos :Yeah.
Renee Lopez :"Would it be okay for a coach or admissions director for the college to read what you're going to say?" And so often they also get tagged in pictures from their, you know, from their friends, and they may have been doing something that is not appropriate. And so oftentimes, they don't even realize that college coaches are looking at their social media before they may have even talked to that student athlete. And so it's something that we really work on in teaching, not only with the families, but also I work with trying to teach the teachers and coaches who are around them, to help us out and make sure that they're not doing anything stupid, which shoots themselves in the foot. And so we want to make sure that we help them through that process. So that's what I do a lot of I do a lot of consulting and a lot of help and walking through the process.
Elizabeth Diacos :Mmhmm. Sounds like it's really valuable, you know, having that service. So, obviously, this is - if someone got in on a scholarship. This is going to save the family a lot of money, and also seemingly a lot of student loan debt down the track as well.
Renee Lopez :Yes. Thousands and thousands of dollars. I teach them I say, "I can't guarantee you a scholarship because you know, it's obviously the coaches who award those." But I say, "If you follow the plan that I know how to follow because I was a college coach and I interviewed 65 college coaches." We put this all together in order to be able to help families and we have over one of our Facebook groups has over 10,000 followers in it. And you know, we we're constantly sharing exciting news, just today I actually had two families who got committed to schools, in the midst of all this going on with the Coronavirus, and they hadn't even you know, they hadn't been to the campuses yet and stuff like that. And so they're doing the virtual tours and talking on the phone with the coaches, and just two today just committed so it's exciting. And, you know, it's still teaching them the process of what to do and we just want to help them through it and make sure they're taking the right steps. And so, you know, it's something I've been able to take, you know, out of my passion. You know, for really helping students. My passion is to add value to people - how can we help them? And you know, my passion is really to be in a situation where we can help change their lives and let's be honest, whether they play you know, their sport for four years in college or not, I want them to get Education because we all know that that's going to change your life.
Elizabeth Diacos :Yeah.
Renee Lopez :You get a college degree for a lot of families especially, you know, inner city schools where you know, maybe basketball or another sport may be the way out the ticket out for them to to get to their family life to a different level.
Elizabeth Diacos :Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And like talking to a lot of teachers I know often they are still in a late adulthood crippled by debt. So imagine like having you know decades of no debt, that would make a massive difference. So I imagining then that you your your service is like a high ticket item because you're going to potentially save hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Renee Lopez :Yeah, we try to keep you know, obviously, I have my book that came out to looking for a full ride an insider's recruiting guide. Well, I'm sure we'll put some information out there for you guys. But you can find that lookingforafullride.com, and we do keep that to being a relatively affordable for families just feel to get some insider's perspective. And I do have 40 free blogs on my website that's rlopezcoaching.com you can find that information. But then yes, absolutely. When we do, I'm consulting. We obviously have different specials we run and be able to help families and we do all those via Zoom and video conferencing. So I do have some clients all across the world. And then I have many of them here in the US across many different time zones. And I think my consulting has about quadrupled since the Coronavirus has happened so we are definitely trying to help as many families as we can and save as many dollars as they can. A lot of families have lost jobs, too.
Elizabeth Diacos :Yeah, yeah, of course I am saying - right. So because they've lost jobs. They want to save the money for the future so that actually is better for you. It's amazing watching how this is all playing out in terms of people, what industries are thriving and which industries are just languishing. So it's been really fascinating to watch. So with that, then, if I was, I'm gonna put the links to this in the show notes. So if I was a family that wanted to find you, what's the best way to find you?
Renee Lopez :Well, you can definitely find me at info@lookingforafullride.com. My book website is lookingforafullride.com and you can find over 40 blogs on the college recruiting process at rlopezcoaching.com. Currently on our website we just have where you can sell direct, you could just actually purchase through my website in the US, if you are outside the US, just shoot me an email info@lookingforafullride.com and we will get it all processed for you. It's just not all set up through our website. Most of our sales do come from the US so we have a, but yeah, we could definitely do it. We can shift to anywhere in the world. It's just a matter of, we're just gonna we chat, make sure we got everything squared away.
Elizabeth Diacos :Fair enough. Okay, so going back to your teaching career, which you didn't really love, was it hard decision to leave then? I mean, a lot of teachers don't want to leave because it's so secure. And that, you know, there's a there's benefits and health care and all that. So tell me about your journey out.
Renee Lopez :Yeah, I think that was the scariest part about it. And I was going to go on to grad school for two years. And so here in the US, graduate assistance, I was going to be teaching some classes and working with their with their teams and stuff like that. And so I was going to get free tuition to go to grad school for a couple years, and get a very, very tiny stipend. And it was a very big leap of faith to leave teaching, the security of it. all those things. I went to grad school for a couple of years - "Made About Peanuts" is the word I would use, in terms of, as a grad assistant, but it allowed me to step into the next opportunity to have a Master's Degree to get into College Coaching. And then now, fast forward into, you know, going from College Coaching into, you know, I started my business part time. And then as I continued to work up on it as my business kind of kind of became more and more demand for my services, you know, so it's kind of a side hustle for a while. And then as I started to make a shift, I realized I need to do this full time. And that was probably the scariest of all, because I'm walking away and saying, "Oh, gosh, okay, how do I make sure I can pay my bills every month?" And you know, I saved up some money just to make sure I was okay. And, you know, I did a couple different things to create a couple different revenue streams, which I think is really key that a lot of people don't think about making sure that you have a passive income stream as well as active so you're not always just trading time for money. I think that's a big key and, you know, a lot of people who may not come from the business world, you know, my Master's in Sports Management, so I I kind of had a lot of the business side of it. But if you come from just the teaching world, you may not have this perspective of, you know, trying to shift gears and what does it look like to run a business every single day. And I think it's really important to make sure you find a way to have passive income, meaning money comes in while you're sleeping, and what does that look like, you know, obviously, consulting and such as, you know, is time and, you know, and it isn't always scalable. And you know, sometimes it can be seen as, you know, group consulting and things like that. But I think the big shift for a lot of people and coming out of Education world and step into the business world is definitely surround yourself with other people who run businesses in a very similar type of niches you but not necessarily the same niche you want to be with competitors, but people who may be also in education, you know, and or something along those lines, who may have the same target market. And I think that's one of the things that I got some great advice as I was shifting out of being, you know, in Education world and Coaching world and the shifting into Business world. Somebody said to me, so figure out five people who run businesses who target the same people that you are targeting for your your target market, but they wouldn't be competing businesses. So, I matched up with somebody who does Sports Dietitian, I matched up with somebody who does mental side of the game, I matched up with somebody who helps with testing and how do you teach prepping for the test that you have to take in order to go into college. And, you know, I matched up with someone who does ACL prevention. And so we started to kind of come together and realize when we all were thinking together, and strategically planning what we're gonna do with our businesses, it was much more effective. I think, that was probably the best words of wisdom I ever had was buying some people who have the make, who have the same target market and start to think about how you can help support each other.
Elizabeth Diacos :Yeah, wow. So just take me back for a second - ACL is that anterior cruciate ligament.
Renee Lopez :Yeah. Yes, yes. Yes.
Elizabeth Diacos :Learned that from my dog, actually. (Laughs)
Renee Lopez :Yes, I actually have connected with a phenomenal physical therapist. Lesley. She is phenomenal. And she does a does an online program for ACL prevention. And so how do you- lots of soccer players for sure have this issue.
Elizabeth Diacos :Yeah. Okay.
Renee Lopez :You know, but she works with skiiers. And she works with basketball players and such just like, you know, with my book, same ideas, you know, I work with, you know, 19 different sports we have all that information, we try and help families there. So, we all kind of started to think differently, and how do we kind of make a shift?
Elizabeth Diacos :Yeah, yeah. Wow, that's amazing. Okay, so, so as you were leaving, you were afraid about the financial side? How did you overcome that...you said you connected with some other like minded people. What else did you do?
Renee Lopez :Well, I think you know, it was it was sitting down and creating a really good business plan that's going to make, you know, different streams of income, not just relying solely on consulting, not just relying solely on book sales. You know, but making very conscientious decisions of where is my speaking career going to be? And, you know, where is it going to be in in terms of consulting? And then, what are we going to sell for my books? Or books? What are we gonna sell for? And just really thinking through the business side of it overall, and what's my passion? And what do I want to do, and I love working with families. I love watching families go from point A to point B, and it's so fun to watch that process. But I also know that I can reach more people sometimes when I go and do a speaking engagement, you know, maybe there's 200 people in the audience. And so we can maybe impact 100 kids, you know, that are there with their parents. And so I want to make a huge reach. I want to help as many families as I can, but trying to really bounce that out of there's only so much time you have to do individual consulting. And so how do you do that manage it financially as well, overall. So I think really creating that business plan, what's going to make sense for you if you want to step out into run your own business, get get a mentor, get somebody who has knows business really well and will just kind of help walk you through it. And I think also getting strategic partners of people who have the same target market I think is really key. And if you can do those things, and then obviously put yourself out there in the media as well. And you know, I, we were had some great success on, on being on some major radio programs with ESPN as well as Sirius XM. And even prior to my book coming out, there's just some great opportunities we had. And so utilize those and figure out best ways to position yourself properly. You know, and that comes with, if you're going to be in this kind of world and speaking worlds and you know, you have to be willing to do some things and to step out of your comfort zone. And you know, I think that's key as well. And the other thing, other words of wisdom, I'll tell you is read, read, read, read, and make sure you always have a business book, a leadership book, something that's challenged you to think a little bit differently in your mindsets and definitely pick up a book by Napoleon Hill "Think and Grow Rich" for sure.
Elizabeth Diacos :Oh, yes. Okay, I think that's on my pile of books behind me somewhere.
Renee Lopez :I can't quite reach. It's about it's about 10 feet away from me, but (laughs)
Elizabeth Diacos :Oh, really? Awesome. Okay, so Think And Grow Rich. So this is the kind of stuff I'll be putting in the show notes for this episode. So for the listeners, you'll be able to access this information when the episode comes out. Okay, so what transferrable skills did you take from teaching into your new roles? Because you've actually got - you're an Author, you're a Coach, and you're a Speaker. That's amazing. What did you take with you from Education?
Renee Lopez :Well, I think you know, it's the idea is - if you can strategize, which every teacher can, you have been planning lesson plans forever, all of your life. You, you think through things and you process things into a step by step process. And if you can take those skills, using a skill, whatever your skill may be. You know, you did art, things like that, you know, maybe you worked in, in music or something like that, whatever it may be, whether it was math, something like that, maybe you can be in a situation where take those skills and break it down into bite sized chunks that people can digest and if that's what your business is going to be, find it and strategize it that way. So, one of the things that I knew about myself was I was really good at helping people plan for their future. Well, I worked with college students, I talked about "what's your major going to be?" and then they would change their major, and then they change the major again, and then they keep changing their majors. And so, you know, I utilize that skill of really saying, "Hey, you know, I know how to help kids strategize. I'm really good at that. How can I help them move on into their lives," and now instead of going to college kids, or you know, with elementary kids that I used to work with is now I actually was just helping and switching into working with high school kids, and walking through the process and really getting into bite sized chunks And one of the things that I did was, you know, also, I felt pretty comfortable writing, I am not the best writer in the world, I can tell you that. But I felt pretty comfortable writing, I'd worked on my my college newspaper and stuff like that, I knew I could write pretty well. And so, somebody also told me if you want to start a business, especially in speaking, consulting worlds, and being an author, write blogs, and I said, "Okay", and then I wrote my first blog, and it was awful. And then I wrote my second one, it was, if we're talking, you know, let's say my first one was zero. My second was maybe a one or a two, okay, and they started getting better and better and better. And I realized which ones started to take off. And so I started to use some of the skill set that I had of just being able to write to put into blogs. Now to this day, you will not find the first five blogs that I ever wrote anywhere published, because I've taking them off of every website possible cause they're awful.
Elizabeth Diacos :Yeah.
Renee Lopez :But the idea of, you know, don't be afraid to fail, you're gonna fail sometimes and take those steps I think is really key. And then connect with other people that are going through the process and it's really funny because I I actually have three very close friends, who also left the Education world and are now running businesses. And we talked about things all the time and saying it. So find a support system who's going to walk you through it too, and be able to really help you with it. But I think if you can kind of really digest that the idea of you have transferable skills, it's just a matter of thinking through what they are. And so go back to you know, your your personality tests and those career tests you probably took when you were in high school, and go and look at what things come up for you. And one of the things that always came up for me was I am really good strategic thinker, and I can actually strategically plan and I feel very comfortable in working with young people. So how do you put those two together and then add the sports side of it for me, and it made sense. And so I just really took those skills to be able to take it into the next realm and then then a throw in this whole idea of blogging and then all of a sudden you become an author, too.
Elizabeth Diacos :Amazing. So see, your has your book grown out of the blog posts, or is it different?
Renee Lopez :A little bit. It's funny, I actually have a chapter in my book, where I did not even plan on this chapter being in my book, but the blog, actually, we put it out there, and it got shared 6000 times. And I was like, "Oh, okay, I didn't think it was that good." And then all of a sudden realized it kept getting shared and shared, shared, I was like, a slight what. I actually went and sent an email to my publisher, I go, "We need to make a change, because this blog actually blew up over just over the course of probably like, three, four weeks,"
Elizabeth Diacos :What was it?
Renee Lopez :So, it was actually on the idea of where what parents role should be in the college recruiting process versus the students role, what they should be. And so, it was it was it was a chapter that we had not really anticipated writing and we literally changed it because we were like, "Okay, this needs to go in." And so it really did help me shape kind of where I wanted to go as an Author, even though some of it was not even planned.
Elizabeth Diacos :Yeah, great, great advice. Okay. So I'm just, you know, as you're talking, I'm thinking, "Hmm. What should I include in my book?" (Laughs)
Renee Lopez :We can talk off camera, about what that looks like.
Elizabeth Diacos :Right. But yeah, that's, that's awesome. So I mean, you know, I'm still getting out of teaching too, like I'm on that that journey as well. So it's good to hear other people's perspectives. So if someone, if you encountered a teacher- or hang on, first of all, how long did that process take from when you left teaching and started your own thing? Or maybe even at the beginning of starting your own thing while you were still working as a teacher? How long until now?
Renee Lopez :So I left. So I went from teaching into coaching and so I was coaching at the college level. And so I did that. And then I actually had taken on an athletic director position at a local church actually. And so I did that for about a year and a half. While I was getting all the side hustle kind of going, and now we're at about, gosh, about four, three and a half, four years. And the book process took about two years of interviews. So you had to still have an income because you weren't getting paid for that process. So I did some of that. And then I started getting into more speaking and stuff like that. And I also do some work in leadership development. I do. I am a Certified Speaker Training Coach for the John Gordon company, as well as the John Maxwell team. And so I was raised to have that as well on the side, but it was kind of jumpstarting my speaking and so, um, you know, that was probably the first year and a half or so. And then we started really enjoying that part. I was also doing some of the books, and then we took another a quite a bit in order to write the actual book and get it all finalized. And so in total, probably three and a half, four years total, but I stepped into my business full time about two and a half years ago.
Elizabeth Diacos :Wow. So that's actually pretty quick. And and so without numbers, just you know, ballpark. Have you been able to replace your teaching income?
Renee Lopez :Yes, we're fine. We're doing fine. Even in the midst of Corona, even in the midst of Corona. (laughs)
Elizabeth Diacos :So in four years, so that's pretty, that's pretty impressive, because I know it sounds like part of the, I guess your strategy, was actually keeping the job while you began so that you had a buffer, and so that you were able to save some money in order to cope with when you went out completely on your own.
Renee Lopez :Absolutely, I think that's really important is make sure you have some cash stored up just in case something happens. You know, my air conditioner blew out, of course, right as I was stepping into this, and you know, that's a good $5,000 of, you know, to repair repair, and I live in Florida, so, you know, which is, right now it's 95 degrees, it's essential right now. So, you know, of course those things happen, but I think make sure that you have yourself set up, um, so you have some cash to put away, but also be working and creating things. Get your website, going. Create all of your, your social media, things like that, do all those things, your logos, stuff like that, and start connecting with people saying, here's what I want to do by this date, I want to step into this full time. And you know, grow your social media, grow your LinkedIn, grow your Facebook, or Twitter or Instagram, whatever it is, especially where your target market is going to be, you know, grow all those things while you're still in your job. Because it's going to take time, you know, the idea is, you know, when it comes to, like, especially like for a book, I wrote blogs every single week for almost a year. And the idea was, I was trying to build up an audience and a following. While I still had a lot of other things set up for me, you know, of income and so, I think the key is if you're going to shift out of out of teaching, especially if you're single, and I'm single so like having that you know, we don't have a spouse to kind of fall back on if things don't go well. I think it's really key is start doing all the things in order to get a following especially going to a speaking world or you know, author consulting type of thing. You're going to that world, build up your following and the people that are going to really be helped by what you're doing. And if you provide value, and you do, you do give a lot of things away for free early on especially. And you know, everyone says, "Oh, you are all these blogs. Do you have all for free your website?" I'm like, "Yeah, absolutely". Because I know what my strategy is in order to, you know, create the business I need to. And so, you know, set up those things, do as much learning as you can about the social media and the marketing that's involved in it too. And like I said, surround yourself with some people who are business people, who are business savvy, who get it who understand digital media, and what to do, and get yourself out of your comfort zone and step into it for sure. It's just, it takes some time. And you do have to make sure that you can pay your bills while you're doing a lot of it because you're gonna be working a lot hours, you're not gonna, it's not gonna be a freeloading type of situation for sure.
Elizabeth Diacos :Yeah, so given that it sounds like you're working very hard right now, are there any regrets about leaving teaching?
Renee Lopez :Haha. Leaving teaching? I don't think so. Leaving college coaching, it is hard because I was very used to having 30 college girls that were my kids pretty much. And so, I think that's probably the hardest thing. But it's fun because now they've graduated bunch of them married, having kids of their own, I keep in touch with a lot of them. So I have literally hundreds of alumni who played for me, they're out there, and I keep in touch with them. So that's it's great to have those relationships. So I think that's the thing I miss, you know, just because you grow really close to your college athletes. But now it's great to see them, you know, and some of them are doing some amazing things some are police officers, some of our nurses working on the front lines right now. Some are physical therapists and you know, some of our businesses, leaders or teachers, and I love seeing what they're doing. So it's great to have that part of it. So I'm still in touch with many of them. But I missed the day to day of having my 30 girls with me for sure.
Elizabeth Diacos :Yeah, those relationships.
Renee Lopez :Absolutely.
Elizabeth Diacos :So, Renee, as we wrap this up today, what's the legacy that you want to leave in the world?
Renee Lopez :Wow, you know, I think I want to be able people to walk alongside me and me to walk alongside them and that they realize that I'm here to help them through difficult challenging process that I know, I know the yes and noes too. I know the steps in order to help them with the college recruiting process. Or maybe it's in working with leadership development programs that I do as well. And, you know, I want to leave people in a better spot strategically, we planned to get them to that spot. And we help them walk them through that, you know, it's about it's about the journey. It's not just about the destination. But I think that's the key is I want to continue to be able to have the same types of passion of why I went into Education was I wanted to help kids move forward and what they were doing. And now it just looks a little different than what it used to. But I just love the opportunity to be able to have that legacy and add value to people and walk them through the next level. And if kids go to college and get a college degree, because of the steps we took, I feel like I've made a difference. And it's going to be it could be generational differences that happen as well, too. So I love that part of the legacy to leave.
Elizabeth Diacos :Renee Lopez, thank you so much for coming on the Get Out of Teaching Podcast today.
Renee Lopez :Thank you so much for having me. I look forward to connecting with all of your listeners in the future.
Elizabeth Diacos :You've been listening to the Get Out of Teaching Podcast presented by Larksong Enterprises with your host Elizabeth Diacos. Do you know someone else who could benefit from hearing more stories of hope and transition from teachers all around the world? Please take a moment to share this and other episodes via your podcast app. Each share helps me reach listeners just like you who can benefit from this content. The Get Out of Teaching Podcast is proud to be part of The Experts On Air Podcast Network. For show notes and other resources please visit larksong.com.au/podcast.